


Natural Disaster

by HoddieMaine



Series: Natural Disasters [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: M/M, Natural disaster au, elemental powers, storm child lance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-18
Updated: 2017-04-18
Packaged: 2018-10-20 15:58:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10665999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HoddieMaine/pseuds/HoddieMaine
Summary: He used to hear stories in the Garrison before his exile, tall tales from fellow vagabonds and drifters. The desert holds a sort of magic. Keith thinks he can feel it. Like the sun baked earth that cracks in shattered glass formations will lead him to something important.





	Natural Disaster

The desert is wide. It's inescapable. Endless, like time is looping back on itself with every step in the dust, the distant mesas seeming to never loom any closer. 

Keith has walked that timeless path. He's spent days in the sand and sweat before seeing another person. Sometimes the vultures fly too close for comfort. Pale skin burned pink in the ruthless rays before stumbling across craggy caves and sanctuary from the sun.

He's built a shack out here in the wild. Well, he found a shack or what was left of one and over the many months he's built and rebuilt the damn thing. He's restless and hopeless and the dry, harsh, unyielding nature of the desert is too well deserved, he thinks.

He scavenges, he barters when he can, he hunts, steals what he must to survive. It's always the water. The storms come in torrential displays of force and might. They come racing in like the wild mustangs he's seen before, only to leave just as quickly. Never enough to catch and store for long.

He used to hear stories in the Garrison before his exile, tall tales from fellow vagabonds and drifters. The desert holds a sort of magic. Keith thinks he can feel it. Like the sun baked earth that cracks in shattered glass formations will lead him to something important.

The stars shine so brightly here in the endlessness. The scorpion crawling past the cactus, mirrored in the sky. And Keith knows. He knows. Something is calling to him.

Days of crackling electricity in the air like a thunderstorm is coming to a head. He watches the clear blue sky, no hints of rain. There's never enough rain. But he can feel it, so he leaves his shack in search for something probably in his own head. He's spent too much time alone. When's the last time he's even spoken to anyone?

Step after step after step. The large rock formations dance in the waves of heat radiating from the ground. Pools of false water shine unfairly all around him. Still he marches.

The sun is quickly lowering and taking the temperature with it. Keith finds himself finally at the mouth of a small cavern. He sets to building a small fire with the supplies he's carried with him. He’ll sleep, and tomorrow he'll start again.

. . .

The fire has long since gone out. The cave is damp, lit with the cold light of morning and Keith shivers. The sun is not yet peaked over the earth but the smallest of light is creeping into the sky.

A blue, glowing and emanating warmth, begins to sweep around him in his little gap in the earth. Brilliant marks and carvings and pictures light around him. 

“Holy shit.”

His throat is as dry as the desert around him. But he isn't scared. He feels like he should be there. He walks further into the cave, the rough walls curving and bending and snaking down into the earth. He gently brushes his fingertips across the carvings.

Except now he hears a voice. It sounds angry? No, that's not quite right. Grumpy. It sounds grumpy. It seems to grow louder, feels like it surrounds him. Keith isn't scared but he knows when to get the hell out of dodge. Something's coming and he is not prepared to take it on, his knife and pack are both still at the opening of the cave.

The cave starts to rumble, and he runs.

He doesn't stop when he reaches his camp. He grabs his stuff and he runs.

Gasping. Throat on fire. Legs screaming and chest heaving. Keith collapses in the sliver of shade behind a cactus. He catches his breath and spits the sand from his mouth. He digs in his bag for his canteen. He comes up empty handed.

“Fuck!” He must of left it in the cave. He flops back into the dirt and closes his eyes, considering letting the birds come pick him clean now, not likely to last much longer anyway.

“Are the only words you know curse words?” The strange voice hits his ears about the same time a drop of water hits his cheek followed by another on his forehead and another and another, until he's soaked in rainfall.

Keith grapples with the ground and his tired limbs to get up. The sand turning to mud beneath his fingers as the cracked ground drinks it up. A tall and lean man nearly the color of the earth at his feet with eyes the clear blue of the sky stares down at him with a look of contempt. Keith's eyes widen in either terror or awe.

The young man that looks to be about his age, stands barefoot in the mud, his dark brown pants soaked and clinging to his narrow waist with gold bands around his toned arms, several blue tattoos curling their way across his broad chest. They reminded Keith of the markings in the cave.

No more than a foot above the stranger’s short brown hair hangs a dark cloud heavy with rain. It storms around him, the cloud sparking with lightning as fat drops of rain crash upon him and now Keith.

“Hellooo…” this walking heat stroke hallucination calls to him.

Keith blinks up into the cloud. If he's dying, he might as well drink it up. He sighs as the rain covers him, a reprieve from the sun. But just as soon as he's settled into this fantastic deathbed vision, the rain disappears.

He opens his eyes to see the man, accompanied by his storm cloud, walking back towards the caves, muttering about stupid people waking him up for no reason. Keith scrambles to his feet. Against his better judgement probably, he approaches the stranger who seems to have plopped down on a large rock.

“No,” Keith says.

The young man looks at him as if _he_ is the strangest part of this interaction.

“What?”

“No,” Keith repeats. “I don't only know curse words.”

The stranger laughs. It sounds like distant thunder.

“You're weird.” He looks one more time at Keith before laying back on the rock, his feet still planted in the mud, legs bent in an easy angle. The rain never ceases to fall. Keith has never seen so much rain in the desert.

“I must be dead… or dying…” Keith looks around and back at the storm cloud.

“You don't look dead.”

Keith puts his hand out under the downpour. Turns it over, catches the drops in his palm, rubs his fingers together with it. When did he get close enough to do that? 

“Hey! I didn't say you could do that…”

“Oh, uh, sorry.” Keith snatched his wet hand back.

“Who are you, and why were you in my cave?”

“Keith. I needed shelter. What’s with the rain?” 

The stranger eyed him from his rock, hands pillowing his head as he lounged.

“I like the rain,” he said simply, a minuscule shrug lifting his shoulders. He closed his eyes and for all Keith could tell, was settled for a nap. 

“I've lost my mind. I've cracked. I-” Keith started to pace. How long has it been since he last saw someone? Did he wear himself down? Did he eat something bad?

Suddenly the rain was beating into his shoulders like the spray of a shower. Comforting. Soothing.

“I mean, you are wandering around the desert and hiding in caves, so yeah, probably.”

Keith stared blankly at him.

“I was talking about you. I'm dying of dehydration and my brain has made up this weird-” Keith gestured vaguely in his direction. “...thing.”

“Hey, I'm not weird! You're weird! What kind of haircut is that anyway?” He pouted and retreated back to his rock. Keith followed, staying within the shadow of the cloud.

He watched the rain water pool in every dip of his skin, the downward turn of his mouth and his eyes squeezed just a little too tight. He was accepting his inevitable demise, but he couldn't help the mounting curiosity surrounding his hallucination.

“So… what, you… you just make it rain on you all the time? Isn't that uncomfortable? You don't get sick or cold?”

The stranger blanched. His eyes opened and he stared up into the thunderhead. How could he keep them open like that with water pelting him?

“I am the storm child,” he said just above a whisper.

“... ok, what does that mean?...”

“It means,” he sighed in exasperation, sitting abruptly. “That I sleep in my cave until some asshole comes and wakes me up without so much as a decent conversation or like, offering, or whatever.”

“Offering? Why would I bring you an offering?”

“The people that used to live out here did.” He surveyed the dry landscape with a sullen wistfulness. When Keith didn't say anything, he looked at him and tsked. Actually tsked. “I'd come out a few times a year and let loose, wandering the valley and the wide spaces, people loved me, and they'd leave me gifts… that was ages ago though… now it seems like I only get noticed if I have a melt down…”

“So… you… live out here?”

“Holy crow are you even listening to me?! Yes, I live out here! Yes, I make it rain! No, this rain cloud just does whatever it wants! Any more stupid questions?”

“.... what's your name?”

Blue eyes widened in his direction before the storm child or whatever burst into a fit of laughter, thunder rolling above him.

“Sometimes I forget how much I like humans.” He seemed to think for a moment. “I don't know what I'm called any more, it's been decades since I've spoken with a human and even longer since I've spoken to the others. I don't know, you can call me whatever you want, I guess.”

Keith frowned.

“Ok… so you're, what, supposed to be like a god, or… wait, what others?”

“I don't want to talk about it. I thought you were going to give me a name, something cool, hip, what's a good name?”

“Um… I don't know… I've never really… named something before? Like I had a turtle when I was little, but I just called him turtle.”

“I… I don't know what to say to that…”

“Whatever, Lance Storm…” Keith smirked at his own joke. One of his former foster parents had been really into wrestling and he remembered watching several matches. He only remembered the name because of his rivalry with Stone Cold Steve Austin, the only wrestler Keith ever cared about.

“Hmmm. Lance Storm… Lance…. yeah, that'll work.”

“Wait, what, no that's not what-”

“Lance and Keith-”

“Lance is boring…”

“Boring? Ha. You think I'm boring?” His blue eyes sparkled with mischief. Keith was suddenly enveloped in long tan arms and the downpour that accompanied it. “It's about time for a storm anyway.”

Keith had no time to pull out of the embrace before he and… Lance, I guess… were careening across the open landscape. Lance’s personal cloud had grown and roiled above spilling heavy drops wherever they went. He knew it wasn't a nice, refreshing rain, storms in the desert were never soft, his shack had been torn apart by more than one. Keith looked into Lance’s eyes but the Blue had been replaced with the oncoming storm, flashing with every crack of lightning above. He should have been scared. Instead he felt shock and awe and something fluttering in his gut.

_Shit._

Lance laughed as they moved, coming to a stop halfway between his cave and Keith's shack. Keith couldn't stop staring at him.

_I think I'm falling for a natural disaster._

**Author's Note:**

> I may continue with this if y'all are interested. I have ideas. 
> 
> I had no prior knowledge of Lance Storm lol that is not something I just knew off the top of my head and I never planned to name Lance after a wrestler haha
> 
> Come talk to me on tumblr  
> Main: hoddiemaine  
> Voltron centric: joinmeinthishell


End file.
